The WEC seems to have this enigma going on right now. While they’re for all intents and purposes a feeder promotion for the UFC, for some unknown reason they cannot seem to draw the numbers that are worthy of a UFC-backed organization. My sense is that it is because of being on a cable network that has issues in its placement in the network placement tier.

A good example is the WEC 43 event which took place last Saturday from the AT&T Center in San Antonio, TX. The event, which was televised on Versus (the network I alluded to), drew only 5,176 spectators to AT&T Center and managed to attract only 413,000 television customers. The TV numbers are down 37% from their last event, WEC 42, in August.

The WEC did get an initial boost from the fact that Versus had a “Watch Versus for free” promotion through December 2 with Dish Network; personally, I do not blame DirecTV for not wanting to deal with Versus as the network wanted entirely too much in their negotiations – hence their agreement with Dish Network.

If I were DirecTV, I would approach a sports-based network and get the WEC into their lineup. It isn’t like the WEC is Affliction or some other wannabe MMA organization.